Marriage is Punishment For Shoplifting
Reviewed by Richard Battersby
Scarborough. Her tourism boom spearheaded by the Grand Hotel's 1867 launch as one of Europe's first and largest giant purpose-built hotels more likely comes to mind than associations as a creative stronghold. Four towers representing each season, twelve floors the months, fifty two chimneys the weeks and 365 bedrooms the days of the year, a magnificent testament to C.19th energy, still looming over the town, beacon of more elegant, slower-paced times. Now one of Yorkshire's 'renaissance towns', with a vibrant music and arts scene fuelled by Hull University's School of Arts and New Media Department, 19% of the economy comprising creative industries with the UK's first free Wi-Fi seafront and harbour area and one of Europe's fastest internet connections, Scarborough is laying claim as the UK's most enterprising place in the 2008 Enterprising Britain Competition. The creative industries have recently played a significant role in the regeneration of northern towns, and, from the evidence of recent events, Scarborough is no exception.
It is July 25th 2008 and as I walk up the high street I can see a grey poster the colour of Scarborough's sky on a not-so-sunny day announcing 'Marriage is Punishment For Shoplifting: This Way'. Sure enough just past the Brunswick Shopping Centre we walk up some steep steps into a temporarily out-of-use Georgian office building. Ex-office room number one's blue carpets and walls are complemented by Richard Battersby and Chris Grieves' Evening in Knightsbridge After The Credit Crunched (2008), acrylic painted directly onto a Homebase roll blind, lit through the window stained glass window-style, the daylight illuminating an imagined interior of what might happen if kids were allowed to invade the penthouses of the richest of the rich Credit Crunch victims. Anarchy rules as fires are lit, joints puffed by under-5s and White Ace downed as the party atmosphere breaks out at Number 1 Hyde Park, where reportedly the world's most expensive flat was sold for one billion pounds, before the plans had even been laid. In the next room, Maggie Hall invites us to crouch down and peer into her little hole in which lines are fighting each other in the kind of street war that might erupt outside one of the two clubs just round the corner. Up the stairs and we're into the big green room, doctor's waiting room-like, where Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth's projection of a blind on a blind does exactly what it says on the tin, but in a calming way, whilst on the walls Kate Owens' Country Cousin series' delicate forms run down the walls ice-cream-on-your-kid's-face style, in a way the British summer rarely allows these days. Over in the bay window Sophie Rogers switches on her power point presentation Carpet Impersonating Midges as well as a fence (2008), her army of northern midges haunting our imaginations before a restless night camping out on the moors, wife complaining about the lack of sleep and kids angry at an absence of entertainment, a north English version of Eraserhead's family dysfunction. Next door Augustus Veinouglou has brought all the way from sun-baked Greece a little man crafted from masking tape, that creme de la creme of the art student tool box hanging on for dear life before a possible plunge into the office fireplace. Lucky the curator's dog has been tied up outside. Up more stairs and into a darkened room, Sophie Rogers' Man With The Longest Cock, an oversized man's oversized penis, ejaculates over us like a cascading chandelier, as we ponder over Potter Brompton's pottery spinning before us as if marriage might be punishment for stealing the plates from the top cupboard, second punishment being a life of free-fall ejaculation into empty rooms. A different woman has been next door, Mrs Tuckerman, hurling the contents of her car at the office in disgust. A large photograph, What is Love? is splayed carelessly across the window, in which the artist lies in the sea face down whilst her friend stands on top in a commanding position, a sort of collaborative human sculpture that might make Gilbert and George smile, and then choke, on their daily kebab. Cigarette filters are strewn across the floor in amongst a laptop which plays a sequence of images recording the artist's journey from her Edinburgh home, via the studio, to Scarborough, an automotive autobiography cut short by the arrival in Scarborough. Up another, this time very steep, flight of stairs, takes us to the final sequence of rooms. In a small low-lit room, Hall presents more moving images, this time what looks like some form of moss decaying and re-forming at break-neck speed, perhaps what might've been viewed from Sterling Moss' racing car presented in Dimitra Polychronis' film of his Le Mans 24 hour, replayed over and over again, early C.20th dynamism brought to early 21st Century Scarborough.
Mike Myers' exclamation 'Garf, marriage is punishment for shoplifting, in some countries' was made in Delaware, as 'no special' a town as Scarborough. But from the evidence of this show, some pretty special things can happen just where you're least expecting it. Scarborough might be stuck out on the famous East coast desert, but it may not be for much longer if more shows like this one are allowed to take place.
Marriage is Punishment for Shoplifting
18 York Place
Scarborough
August 2nd and 3rd 2008
http://marriageispunishmentforshoplifting.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Wednesday, 6 August 2008
tank you
Mike Dransfield and the Scarborough Council, Claudia Nye and Ciaran Bartram at Scarborough University, Tom at Wold Top Brewery, Captain Ant, Tom Watton, Dave Dog Carley, Stephen Vear, Helen Donnelly and Stuart Cameron at Crescent Art Gallery, Tony Robinson, Marchant McKechnie, Wendy Cluthers and Michelle at Create, Martin and Marion Rogers and all the artists.
Blue Floor
Richard Battersby Evening in Knightsbridge after the credit crunched (Painting on Blind)
Maggie Hall Line (animation inside a box with a spy hole)
Green Floor
Augustus Veinoglou the monk (masking tape relief)
Dimitra Polychronis Cracked Egg (photograph)
Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth Blind (venetian blind and projection of a blind on to the blind)
Kate Owens Country Cousins 4a and b (prints, condensation and plastic sleaves)
Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth Blind
Kate Owens Country Cousins series
Sophie Rogers Carpet impersonating as midges as well as a fence (PowerPoint Presentation)
Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth Blind
Yellow Floor
Sophie Rogers Moon and mothers plates (PowerPoint presentation projection onto) Man with the longest cock come maypole chandelia (fabric haberdashery embroidery sequins and buttons)
Mary Ann Tuckerman What is love (Poster)
Mary Ann Tuckerman Instillation view there to here (Slide show)
Mary Ann Tuckerman To have the courage as a species to allow ourselves to die (Mulit media)
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Marriage is Punishment for Shoplifting
Marriage is punishment for shoplifting
Treating a space as a one off gallery and sites specifically is something that excites me, presenting its challenges to the artist and the voyeur. In this space 18 York Place it’s Georgian architecture are something to play with, even the remnants of the previous occupiers who used the rooms as offices, each floor colour coded each room door labelled, e.g. I.T room, Sonya’s office, the kitchen and reception.
I wanted to bring artists to Scarborough that perhaps would never dream of visiting let alone exhibiting in a not so very popular visual arts venue. Scarborough is a town stuck out on the famous East coast desert where the last train or bus to Scarborough from York or Leeds is about 9pm. Famous for its British holiday destination, according to some locals it’s the birth place of tourism, due to its famous spring discovered in the 1700’s.
I was thinking of a title, when I scanned through my WHSmith diary with it’s one line quotes at the bottom of every page, and I found ‘Garf, marriage is punishment for shoplifting, in some countries.’ Mike Myers, 1963-, Canadian actor (from 1992 film ‘Wayne’s World’) I came over in a flood of excitement and revived my interest in Wayne’s World, Youtubeing it and watching Garf do his dance to Jimmi Hendrix’s foxy lady, which I think would make a great keep fit routine. It makes you think back to the 90’s when we didn’t have www and these guys represented a fantasy with their home TV show. In their no special town ‘hi I’m in Delaware’.
I was interested to learn that Skarthi the founder Viking of Scarborough was not just a warrior he was also a poet. Unfortunately I failed to find any of his poems, but did source his brother Fleyn also a poet who is linked to Flamborough (a coastal village on a peninsular stuck about 7 miles out to sea) near Scarborough, on wikipedia, which one can enjoy listening to it spoken in it’s original language poems about a woman he had a long lasting thing for.
The artists I have invited to participate in the show are people I know that I’ve met along the way in my career, from Yorkshire Coast College to art school in Edinburgh, to my trip to Athens Biennial 2007 where I exhibited in the Young Athenians show
I thought it would be exciting to bring a group of artists together whose work I believe will hold an interesting conversation when brought together in the space of 18 York Place which was kindly offered rent and rates free by the Scarborough Council and is being supported by Create and Wold Top Brewery.
The Jolly Roger
Treating a space as a one off gallery and sites specifically is something that excites me, presenting its challenges to the artist and the voyeur. In this space 18 York Place it’s Georgian architecture are something to play with, even the remnants of the previous occupiers who used the rooms as offices, each floor colour coded each room door labelled, e.g. I.T room, Sonya’s office, the kitchen and reception.
I wanted to bring artists to Scarborough that perhaps would never dream of visiting let alone exhibiting in a not so very popular visual arts venue. Scarborough is a town stuck out on the famous East coast desert where the last train or bus to Scarborough from York or Leeds is about 9pm. Famous for its British holiday destination, according to some locals it’s the birth place of tourism, due to its famous spring discovered in the 1700’s.
I was thinking of a title, when I scanned through my WHSmith diary with it’s one line quotes at the bottom of every page, and I found ‘Garf, marriage is punishment for shoplifting, in some countries.’ Mike Myers, 1963-, Canadian actor (from 1992 film ‘Wayne’s World’) I came over in a flood of excitement and revived my interest in Wayne’s World, Youtubeing it and watching Garf do his dance to Jimmi Hendrix’s foxy lady, which I think would make a great keep fit routine. It makes you think back to the 90’s when we didn’t have www and these guys represented a fantasy with their home TV show. In their no special town ‘hi I’m in Delaware’.
I was interested to learn that Skarthi the founder Viking of Scarborough was not just a warrior he was also a poet. Unfortunately I failed to find any of his poems, but did source his brother Fleyn also a poet who is linked to Flamborough (a coastal village on a peninsular stuck about 7 miles out to sea) near Scarborough, on wikipedia, which one can enjoy listening to it spoken in it’s original language poems about a woman he had a long lasting thing for.
The artists I have invited to participate in the show are people I know that I’ve met along the way in my career, from Yorkshire Coast College to art school in Edinburgh, to my trip to Athens Biennial 2007 where I exhibited in the Young Athenians show
I thought it would be exciting to bring a group of artists together whose work I believe will hold an interesting conversation when brought together in the space of 18 York Place which was kindly offered rent and rates free by the Scarborough Council and is being supported by Create and Wold Top Brewery.
The Jolly Roger
Richard Battersby
Richard Battersby’s paintings function both as stills of a drama unfolding, and provide the stage sets before which live events take place, as in their placement within the exhibition Land Of Nod (July 2007), in which they were the backdrop for live performances. Arm Yourself for the Physical Challenges of the Day presents a city version of the Scott’s Porage Oats packet image, but instead of breakfast being a morning activity, it takes place here at 7pm, with all the potential excitements of the night in store. Whilst presenting an image of people in a particular time and place, advertising is satirised. Are the bulging biceps of the men on the packet really what we need to carry out tasks in our increasingly technological workplaces? A new piece made with Chris Grieves imagines what might happen if kids were allowed to invade the living rooms of Credit Crunch victims, to be exhibited at the launch of their new club The Coma Lounge, this July.
Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth
Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth’s current work addresses video and editing, particularly the creation of visual effects. They have been working with light as a medium and a subject, experimenting with different forms of perception and representation. Their new series of films explores effects of the light and forms of modification, creation of each effect is filmed as a basic documentation.
Each work shows not only the effect of the light being documented but also the processes of using video to document it. One work shows a video of the shadow of Venetian blinds being opened and closed projected on to a set of open blinds. The slats of the blind refract the white light from the video projector into cyan and magenta. The projected image is one of a shadow projected onto a film of a shadow, this also creates an optical illusion.
In this way the work often becomes a metafictive representation of working practice and a tautological demonstration. In these works the process of making is part of the product. The artists want the audience to be aware of this praxis. The presentation of the videos reflects back upon the methods and tools of production and the actions involved in compiling and editing the effects. The works as a group result in sensation of liminality, each video being in a constant state of change.
Maggie Hall
Maggie Hall produces versatile work that is developed mainly through experimentation. Hall intends to produce work without narrative and verbal content, work which exists to be experienced and that is not a reaction to theory. Hall uses an amalgamation of different mediums and is particularly interested in how the boundaries of video work can be relayed and understood.
Hall has become more interested in the process of creative work and produced work which shows an occurrence taking place and that is also suggestive of its own construction. These works also intend to try to compress or contain the initial creative energy and tensions that reveal them selves in their creation. Hall is interested in the act of creating work but also the in-between, the construction of thought and finding ideas.
Hall has become more interested in the process of creative work and produced work which shows an occurrence taking place and that is also suggestive of its own construction. These works also intend to try to compress or contain the initial creative energy and tensions that reveal them selves in their creation. Hall is interested in the act of creating work but also the in-between, the construction of thought and finding ideas.
Kate Owens
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Kate Owens covets the life of the flaneur. Her observations of the small defects and diversions in daily routines take on a significance beyond their scale. Evoking Godard’s coffee cup moment; “…since every event transforms my daily life… I must listen, I must look around more than ever.”[1], the work is perpetually flitting between its familiar micro identity and a more abstract macro state.
In the Country Cousin series, water damaged prints transform before the eyes to acquire pictorial depth and narrative before becoming ink runs on paper once more. This transient condition along with a refusal to become permanent, adds to the works vulnerability. In the end the viewer can only believe in its existence or not.
[1] Two or Three Things I know About Her…Jean-Luc Godard, France 1966
Dimitra Polychronis
Dimitra Polychronis is a Canadian artist who works and lives in Calgary, AB. She is an interdisciplinary artist whose work responds to the subjective realities of time and place by proposing re-examinations of realities and counter-reality tangibilities. She is a recent graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design (2005) and currently exhibits her work in both self-initiated and institutional venues, in the form of photography, installation, painting, and video.
Polychronis’ most recent works primarily explore how popular methods of film and photography offer glimpses of reality as idealized documentation, while attempting to demonstrating how the product can never perfectly achieve all the elements that comprise past encounters. Using personal or found photography taken out of its original context, she alters the intended viewing experience, forcing viewer to undergo experience based on subjective intentions.
Sophie Rogers
You need humour to survive.
“That there was an accident. It was the best mistake I ever made” Quote Kate Bush Aerial ‘An Architects dream’
Sophie Rogers lives and works near Scarborough. She studied at Yorkshire Coast College and Edinburgh College of Art and has since moved and worked between the two areas as well as travel about a bit. Rogers has exhibited here and there but not everywhere. She is passionate about art and creating alternative showing possibilities such as this exhibition.
Her work is usually inspired by her surroundings and delusional states of mind. Her works vary in medium and format from fabric hangings such as I feel like a house wife waiting to happen to PowerPoint presentation animations a medium she started using this year. She plays with art and anti art, craft et conceptualism.
In this show Rogers might show Carpet impersonating midges as well as a fence an animation made in PowerPoint presentation and Man with the longest cock (made in to a chandelier rather like a may pole), using a bit of the old fashioned stitch and bitchyness carnival craftsmanship, this in situ with Moon and mothers plates another ppt animation which was part born from thus here wee true storey…and the plates that serenade us in many a mothers kitchens and dining rooms.
Die Mont hat augen wie hange titten.
I see that the man is not there but a lady instead, a rather cheery comical big eyed face. Witnessing Luna’s many visages, I giggle, her eyes they remind me of nude sagging breasts. Laughing I ask Volka, “how do you say, ‘the moon has eyes like droopy boobs’?” I particularly like it when she is three quarters full, peeping from behind the black curtain.
“That there was an accident. It was the best mistake I ever made” Quote Kate Bush Aerial ‘An Architects dream’
Sophie Rogers lives and works near Scarborough. She studied at Yorkshire Coast College and Edinburgh College of Art and has since moved and worked between the two areas as well as travel about a bit. Rogers has exhibited here and there but not everywhere. She is passionate about art and creating alternative showing possibilities such as this exhibition.
Her work is usually inspired by her surroundings and delusional states of mind. Her works vary in medium and format from fabric hangings such as I feel like a house wife waiting to happen to PowerPoint presentation animations a medium she started using this year. She plays with art and anti art, craft et conceptualism.
In this show Rogers might show Carpet impersonating midges as well as a fence an animation made in PowerPoint presentation and Man with the longest cock (made in to a chandelier rather like a may pole), using a bit of the old fashioned stitch and bitchyness carnival craftsmanship, this in situ with Moon and mothers plates another ppt animation which was part born from thus here wee true storey…and the plates that serenade us in many a mothers kitchens and dining rooms.
Die Mont hat augen wie hange titten.
I see that the man is not there but a lady instead, a rather cheery comical big eyed face. Witnessing Luna’s many visages, I giggle, her eyes they remind me of nude sagging breasts. Laughing I ask Volka, “how do you say, ‘the moon has eyes like droopy boobs’?” I particularly like it when she is three quarters full, peeping from behind the black curtain.
Mary Ann Tuckerman
The story goes that In 1100 a very talented woman, Jean de Mailly, dressed as a man, rose through the clergy and became pope. One day while out on horseback she gave birth to a son. She was then bound to the tail of a horse, dragged round the city, stoned to death by the mob, and was buried where she died.
Augustus Veinoglou
Augustus Veinoglou is an artist from Athens Greece. He studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art 2000-04.
He's been living in the city of Athens for the past two years using a flat as his studio in the centre of Athens, in the area called Kipseli (literally meaning 'Hive'). Kipseli is within the top 10 most densely populated areas of Europe.
Augustus has shown great interest in discovering the materials which constitute and characterize the neighborhood and the people that dwell within the confined space of city apartments.
He has been inspired by the "small removals and transfers" and other everyday street affairs. His sources of material come partly from the living rooms of the deceased, left belongings which are transferred down on the streets to get rid off.
Augustus's work is primarily based upon "the ephemeral world which gets built fast and hastily and often breaks and leaks". He is perhaps himself somewhere stuck within the remnants of an old-solid rocky "structure" which gets persistently "renovated" in a new-hastily built manner...
Although he could easily settle under these conditions and carry on his work in "narrow town", his "depot" on masking tape, Styrofoam and polyurethane, which are major insulators and fast repairers used extensively in the domestic and building constructions has given him the opportunity to create experimental works which now owe to travel across Europe in order to be installed in an ex-office building in ex - "Resort town", Scarborough, UK.
The Georgian building in 18 York Place still keeps fresh its memories of its previous occupiers. Used as an office building it certainly signifies the existence of an urban discourse by the selection of the materials used, colors, interior arrangements but also the way these have defined till our present times the Psycho - geography of the building as well as its emotional impression.
A site of narratives that originate from the "epidermis" of its interior but also from an inaugurated ambience will get somewhat married with relief and photographic representations that depict, captured psycho geographies and emotional ripostes from his experience in the cramped city of Athens.
The marriage between the decorative, relief, painting and photographic works and the interior disposition of the site of 18 York Place will bring life to a selected sector within the building, ultimately proposing a rejuvenated venture to its "voyeurs".
Augustus's works will have the propensity to convey elements of mending and curing, by the symbolic employment of materials: tapes and foam, which are used extensively in order to "restore", not human wounds, but "crevices" in the materials that surround us.
This will result in the vitalization of a performance which will incorporate the topics of "parasitism", and "mending", Augustus's work will be primarily based in an in-situ inquiry on 18 York Place.
He's been living in the city of Athens for the past two years using a flat as his studio in the centre of Athens, in the area called Kipseli (literally meaning 'Hive'). Kipseli is within the top 10 most densely populated areas of Europe.
Augustus has shown great interest in discovering the materials which constitute and characterize the neighborhood and the people that dwell within the confined space of city apartments.
He has been inspired by the "small removals and transfers" and other everyday street affairs. His sources of material come partly from the living rooms of the deceased, left belongings which are transferred down on the streets to get rid off.
Augustus's work is primarily based upon "the ephemeral world which gets built fast and hastily and often breaks and leaks". He is perhaps himself somewhere stuck within the remnants of an old-solid rocky "structure" which gets persistently "renovated" in a new-hastily built manner...
Although he could easily settle under these conditions and carry on his work in "narrow town", his "depot" on masking tape, Styrofoam and polyurethane, which are major insulators and fast repairers used extensively in the domestic and building constructions has given him the opportunity to create experimental works which now owe to travel across Europe in order to be installed in an ex-office building in ex - "Resort town", Scarborough, UK.
The Georgian building in 18 York Place still keeps fresh its memories of its previous occupiers. Used as an office building it certainly signifies the existence of an urban discourse by the selection of the materials used, colors, interior arrangements but also the way these have defined till our present times the Psycho - geography of the building as well as its emotional impression.
A site of narratives that originate from the "epidermis" of its interior but also from an inaugurated ambience will get somewhat married with relief and photographic representations that depict, captured psycho geographies and emotional ripostes from his experience in the cramped city of Athens.
The marriage between the decorative, relief, painting and photographic works and the interior disposition of the site of 18 York Place will bring life to a selected sector within the building, ultimately proposing a rejuvenated venture to its "voyeurs".
Augustus's works will have the propensity to convey elements of mending and curing, by the symbolic employment of materials: tapes and foam, which are used extensively in order to "restore", not human wounds, but "crevices" in the materials that surround us.
This will result in the vitalization of a performance which will incorporate the topics of "parasitism", and "mending", Augustus's work will be primarily based in an in-situ inquiry on 18 York Place.
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